Why do magazines and papers feature women rather than men?

Are the media guilty of sexism in their coverage of celebrities? That's the theme of a New York Times article by Alex Williams, Boys will be boys, girls will be hounded. Here's some of the evidence for the claim:

A video of Heath Ledger attending a drug-fuelled party two years before his death was not broadcast by the TV show that obtained it out of respect for his family... But a video of Amy Winehouse reeling around her home while supposedly having taken drugs was available for all to see courtesy of the News of the World website.

When Owen Wilson was taken to hospital after an apparent suicide attempt, it was the subject of a single US Weekly cover story. But Britney Spears, recently confined in a psychiatric ward, has inspired six cover stories for the same magazine.

When Kiefer Sutherland was released from jail after serving a 48-day sentence for drunken driving, it was hardly mentioned. But Paris Hilton's jail saga last year received wall-to-wall coverage.

Williams writes: "Months of parallel incidents like these seem to demonstrate disparate standards of coverage. Men who fall from grace are treated with gravity and distance, while women in similar circumstances are objects of derision, titillation and black comedy. Some celebrities and their handlers are now saying straight out that the news media have a double standard."

Why? Well, first off the readers are mainly women. The readership of US Weekly is 70% female while People magazine has a 90% female audience. That determines who appears and the scale of the coverage. Janice US Weekly editor-in-chief Janice Min says: "Almost no female magazines will put a solo male on the cover. You just don't. It's cover death. Women don't want to read about men unless it's through another woman: a marriage, a baby, a breakup."

That's not the only explanation. Fox News reporter Roger Friedman says female stars tend to make more-compelling stories because "they are more emotional and open" about their problems. Male stars, he said, tend to be "circumspect."

Colin Farrell appears to agree, saying recently that the attention given to women and the hounding of them "is certainly an argument for it being incredibly sexist". Mind you, as he knows, it hasn't stopped him being a target.

Is it the same in Britain? You bet. Look at the celebrity magazines. Stories about women and pictures of women. Look also at today's papers: several shots of Cheryl Cole but none of her errant husband Ashley. In the Daily Mirror's 3am page, pictures and "stories" of Lindsay Lohan and Ms Winehouse. In The Sun's TV biz, a picture of an EastEnders' actress being "helped" out of a nightclub.

I guess it's always been like that, but should we blame editors for giving their readers what they want, even if it means disproportionate coverage of women? Incidentally, it's men who make money from it.

A friend of mine was in Los Angeles at the weekend when she witnessed 30 photographers fighting with each other in order to snap Britney Spears walking a few yards from a Fred Segal store to her car. Though she has seen the paparazzi at work before, she was shocked by the scrum. "Grown men were hitting each other", she said. "It was terribly sad."